he rode up to the little wicket of Alice's garden.
Her seat beneath the birch-tree was vacant, though the day was pleasant
and the sun was high. He approached the hut, and heard from within the
sobs and wailing of a female. No answer was returned when he knocked,
so that, after a moment's pause, he lifted the latch and entered. It
was indeed a house of solitude and sorrow. Stretched upon her miserable
pallet lay the corpse of the last retainer of the house of Ravenswood
who still abode on their paternal domains! Life had but shortly
departed; and the little girl by whom she had been attended in her last
moments was wringing her hands and sobbing, betwixt childish fear and
sorrow, over the body of her mistress.

The Master of Ravenswood had some difficulty to compose the terrors
of the poor child, whom his unexpected appearance had at first rather
appalled than comforted; and when he succeeded, the first expression
which the girl used intimated that "he had come too late." Upon
inquiring the meaning of this expression, he learned that the deceased,
upon the first attack of the mortal agony, had sent a peasant to the
castle to beseech an interview of the Master of Ravenswood, and had
expressed the utmost impatience for his return. But the messengers of
the poor are tardy and negligent: the fellow had not reached the castle,
as was afterwards learned, until Ravenswood had left it, and had then
found too much amusement among the retinue of the strangers to return in
any haste to the cottage of Alice. Meantime her anxiety of mind seemed
to increase with the agony of her body; and, to use the phrase of
Babie, her only attendant, "she prayed powerfully that she might see
her master's son once more, and renew her warning." She died just as the
clock in the distant village tolled one; and Ravenswood remembered, with
internal shuddering, that he had heard the chime sound through the wood
just before he had seen what he was now much disposed to consider as the
spectre of the deceased.

It was necessary, as well from his respect to the departed as in common
humanity to her terrified attendant, that he should take some measures
to relieve the girl from her distressing situation. The deceased,
he understood, had expressed a desire to be buried in a solitary
churchyard, near the little inn of the Tod's Hole, called the Hermitage,
or more commonly Armitage, in which lay interred some of the Ravenswood
family, and many of their followe